-faced boy about the courts, treated him, not exactly
with indignity, but with patronising good-nature, listening with
an air of half-attention to what he said, and then not taking the
slightest heed of a word of it. Who does not know this transparent
pretence of courtesies, which of all discourtesies is the most
offensive? "Ah, just so, Sir Thomas; just so. And now, Mr. Trigger,
I suppose Mr. Puffer's account hasn't yet been settled." Any word
from Mr. Trigger was of infinitely greater value with Mr. Joram than
all Sir Thomas's protestations. Sir Thomas could not keep himself
from remembering that Jacky Joram's father was a cheesemonger at
Gloucester, who had married the widow of a Jew with a little money.
Twenty times Sir Thomas made up his mind to retire from the business
altogether; but he always found himself unable to do so. When he
mentioned the idea, Griffenbottom flung up his hands in dismay at
such treachery on the part of an ally,--such treachery and such
cowardice! What!--had not he, Sir Thomas, forced him, Griffenbottom,
into all this ruinous expenditure? And now to talk of throwing up the
sponge! It was in vain that Sir Thomas explained that he had forced
nobody into it. It was manifestly the case that he had refused to go
on with it by himself, and on this Mr. Griffenbottom and Mr. Trigger
insisted so often and with so much strength that Sir Thomas felt
himself compelled to stand to his guns, bad as he believed those guns
to be.

If Sir Thomas meant to retreat, why had he not retreated when a
proposition to that effect was made to him at his own chambers? Of
all the weak, vacillating, ill-conditioned men that Mr. Griffenbottom
had ever been concerned with, Sir Thomas Underwood was the weakest,
most vacillating, and most ill-conditioned. To have to sit in the
same boat with such a man was the greatest misfortune that had ever
befallen Mr. Griffenbottom in public life. Mr. Griffenbottom did not
exactly say these hard things in the hearing of Sir Thomas, but he
so said them that they became the common property of the Jorams,
Triggers, Spiveycombs, and Spicers; and were repeated piecemeal to
the unhappy second member.

He had secured for himself a separate sitting-room at the "Percy
Standard," thinking that thus he would have the advantage of being
alone; but every one connected with his party came in and out of his
room as though it had been specially selected as a chamber for public
purposes. Even Griffe